Autonomous robots go swimming

Autonomous robots become a reality at long last.

Many years ago I read a book by Steven Levy on artificial life. Of the many parts that have stuck with me over these years was the boids. These little computer animations show how simple rules can lead to complex emergent behavior. In this case, the boids are only programmed with two rules: try and maintain even separation from your nearest neighbors, and follow the center of mass motion, which is the average flock direction and speed. When these two rules are combined, the boids behave just like flocks of birds or schools of fish. This discovery and others like it have found application in the motion picture industry. However, the hope that such rules would lead to simple, autonomous robots has run into many practical difficulties.

The problem is that making robots that could be expected to reliably function for any reasonable duration has turned out to be more difficult than anyone expected. This is particularly true for robots expected to be able to cross rough terrain, which is why the first deployment of autonomous robots will be ocean going gliders. The gliders are mobile instrument platforms designed to monitor a cold water upwelling that occurs northwest of Monterey Bay every year . The robots will self choreograph their movements like schools of fish. However, they are designed to maintain a much larger average separation than most fish species. In addition, they are provided with extra rules, much like those used by grazing animals following a food source. Though the food source in this case happens to be particular types of data. It is in deciding what data is most interesting that human intervention will occur. Depending on the results of current measurements, the researchers can re-prioritize the food sources of the glider causing them to follow different oceanic events. In this way the researchers expect to be able to obtain a very detailed picture of the upwelling as it occurs.

It is cool to see something that has been the subject of fundamental research for twenty years to step, blinking, out of the lab and into practical use.

Chris Lee / Chris writes for Ars Technica's science section. A physicist by day and science writer by night, he specializes in quantum physics and optics. He lives and works in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.